


Chance

by moricat



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, American Armin Arlert, American Eren Yeager, Art Student Eren Yeager, College Student Armin Arlert, College Student Eren Yeager, First Meetings, M/M, Medical Student Armin Arlert, Meet-Cute, modern american au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9607859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moricat/pseuds/moricat
Summary: Modern American AU in which Armin is a medical student and Eren is an art student and their paths finally cross by “chance”.For my good friend Armini-Man on tumblr. Happy birthday, you’re wonderful, and I hope you have a wonderful day this year :3 ❤❤❤❤❤ I hope you like this.





	

Armin sulked around the campus trying to clear his head after a grueling chemistry class. He hated chemistry. He hated every class on his schedule, really. Being a doctor was actually the last career he’d ever wanted, but the rest of the world had this “little” habit of telling him where to go, and what to do, and what his talents should be used for… _‘Smart kids go to school to be a doctor for good pay. Dumb kids work at McDonald’s for the rest of their lives.’_ That’s what they always told him… “But who of those kids is actually _happy?_ …” Armin wondered to himself. He felt so empty…

Deciding that grey walls and black tables full of text books, pharmaceutical tools, and endless notes weren’t the world Armin wanted to end the day and start the weekend with, he decided to wander over to the arts building… Breezing through that front door already made a world of difference… It was like a breath of fresh air. The smell of paints and old wooden pianos filled the atmosphere and tickled his excited nose until he sneezed. He walked slowly through the lobby to the mixed sounds of violins and choir practices to reach the stairs. All over the walls were artworks done by students of the school as well as a few purchased pieces done by professionals. A massive quilt depicting a land scape covered the entire right wall. Stitched mountains and patchwork fields… and silky ocean waves… “Ah, the ‘outside world’…” He thought to himself. “The world they pretty much tell you to forget about…” Armin had a secret dream of traveling across the seas, rather than become a capitalist’s pawn in medical school… The image of the open and ever living blue waters that lead to lands unknown with colorful views one could never imagine unless they’d seen it themselves, were a million and one times better than the empty grey view of his program’s classrooms…

He reached the top of the stairs and observed all of the various visual art pieces hanging along the halls, to the sound of either clarinet music or oboe music from the classroom a few doors behind him now. A nude portrait by a Picasso wannabe, a cityscape in the style of Van Gogh, a mixed media page featuring an intricate landscape made entirely out of various pastas… “This is the understated beauty of mankind…” he thought. “These are the heroes of humanity no one praises. Where would we be without the expressive wisdom and vision of each other?”

He turned the corner and strolled down the next hall, now in silence aside from the faint muffled music of a practicing orchestra in the auditorium on the floor below, and the _‘chik chik chik’_ of sculptures being hammered behind a closed classroom door. These walls were aligned with sketches on the left wall and photography on the right. Armin walked slow, going back and forth to look at the framed works on each side, one by one… before one framed piece halted him completely… It was a photo of his favorite thinking place back in Shiganshina during his childhood. A little meadow near the suburbs where he lived, with a humble tree that blossomed in the early spring… The tree had no blossoms in this photo and its leaves were reddening, indicating that it was fall when the picture was taken. The spring also brought about endless beds of periwinkle forget-me-nots to the field, a flower that always spoke to Armin. He’d spent a lot of lonely time under that tree tying the stems of those flowers into long garlands that he could pretend were leis from an island or something else more exotic than his boring reality… It was curious that this photo captured such an empty scenery and yet it had a rose colored filter over everything, indicating it was something the photographer held as dear and pure to them… “Did something personal happen to them here on that day? Maybe they climbed that tree as a child and that was their first victory? Maybe they buried a lost pet there? Or maybe they met someone special there… A childhood sweetheart? Is it about the tree itself as a metaphor for something? Maybe it’s about how even though something is empty and forgotten, it’s still living and breathing and full of history, or something…” His eyes got wider with each potential answer to the mystery his mind concocted. He felt like he was conversing with the photographer by himself, and just waiting for them to respond any second now, aching to hear their replies. It was starting to dizzy him in excitement for the possibilities! So he decided he wanted to speak to the photographer in person right away. He read the printed name on the corner of the photo: _Eren Yeager…_

* * *

Armin strolled down the halls before him, searching for a photography class through the classroom door windows to find a professor that could direct him to the photographer student in question… but after an hour of scouring that floor, and even the other 2 floors on the off chance it were there, he found he had no luck. “How tragic… I guess photography is a Tuesday/Thursday class…” he sighed. Mourning the loss of a chance he might’ve met someone interesting to talk to that day, Armin dragged himself back to that empty hallway on the second floor to stare at Eren Yeager’s photo again, imagining himself under that tree and perhaps seeing Eren Yeager come by perchance… What a difference that would’ve made in his life… What a difference…

“You’re staring at _this_ photo?” A low voice suddenly said, hitting Armin’s ears like thunder since he was completely lost in thought, missing even the loud noise of the students clamoring out of the slideshow lecture just down the hall.

“ _AH!--”_  He jumped as he turned around to face a dark haired young man behind him. “You scared me… Hah. Yeah, I am.” He chuckled, trying to catch his breath.

“Why?” The stranger asked with a raised eyebrow and confused upper lip, like he had no idea why anyone would look at a woefully simple shot like this for more than a passing glance. Especially when photos of multicolored crystals and starry-reflected lakes were on either side of it…

Armin studied him for a quick second… He was tall, and dark… and handsome. His eyebrows looked a little furry, like they furrowed pretty often, and his dark hair looked like he might cut it himself at home and maybe forgot to this month, (which Armin sure could relate to). And those forresty eyes met his… striking him like lightning as they stared into his own, waiting for Armin to answer his question. Truthfully, this stranger looked a little scary to him. But he answered him honestly. “It’s a photo of a place I used to visit as a kid all the time. And it makes me so curious as to what the photographer sees in it that made them so keen as to snap this photo of it and “preserve” its meaning in a rose tint. Isn’t it intriguing? There’s no telling what this place means to them! Is it nostalgia for childhood? Is it a metaphor for aging? Is it a message about what we forget in our hustle into becoming adults or climbing the ladder? What could “Eren Yeager’s” story be, based on this? It’s a wonder to me!“ He smiled gesturing to the image in his praise. “Don’t you think?”

The stranger raised his eyebrow even further and blushed as a laugh forced its way through his lips. “Pff-- Hahaha! Wow. You got all that from this shitty photo? Incredible. What’s your name?”

“Armin… Arlert.” The blond replied softly, wanting to be offended on Eren Yeager’s behalf but found he couldn’t stop staring at this stranger’s charming smile… It captured him a million and one times more than that photo… His own cheeks were beginning to blush from looking at him and, unbeknownst to him, his eyes were sparkling more than the crystal or starry lake photos to the sides behind him…

The dark haired guy crossed his arms, still grinning and still lightly blushing. “Eren. I took the photo.”

Armin grinned back, bubbling with happiness now that he finally met the photographer. “Oh, I’ve been searching for you since I got here! I-I mean I was-- looking for the photography class to meet you and talk to you but I guessed it was only on Tuesdays and Thursdays…”

“It is. I was in Art History…” he explained, trying not to get lost in this lovely blond fellow’s deep, glimmering, oceanic eyes… “Say… you wanna go to the café by the student center?… Maybe we can talk about it for a while if you’re not busy…”

Armin’s cheeks were all aglow and his widening smile perked them up even higher...

* * *

Eren actually had another class and a ceramics studio hour he needed to attend before he was done for the weekend, but something about this blond stranger seemed _much_ more important to the course of his life today…

They’d sat in the student coffee shop for _hours_ talking about not only the photo, but everything else too… It turned out that they’d grown up in the same neighborhood. And while Armin visited that tree in the meadow in the mornings and daytime, Eren had been visiting there in the afternoons and evenings, wishing he had someone to make cloud watching more interesting for him, if possible… What a difference it would’ve made in his life. What a difference…

Neither of them were enjoying school, as it turned out. Eren’s parents insisted he attend, so he took the one major that didn’t seem unbearable or impossible for him after flunking out of the athletics department. Armin could certainly relate, especially with his ever straining grades fluctuating more and more lately as depression began to consume him. This had actually been the most either of them smiled since enrolling…

Armin had a way of thinking that Eren had never seen before. He was so wise, wiser than anyone he’d ever met, and was so understanding of human nature, and so full of inspiration and life… Maybe photography would’ve been a much more fulfilling major if he were taking pictures of this gorgeous guy sitting before him instead of nostalgic trees and his cheap Italian dinners. “Goddamn it…” He thought as he stared at Armin’s pretty little simper while he sat there so meekly before him, sipping ginseng tea and eating a blueberry muffin. “We’re sitting here like it were as simple a matter of bumping into each other next to my photo, but this is _fate_. This is… this is destiny and a gift from above if such a crazy fucking dream come true could ever happen to an average loser like me…”

They stayed there until the cafe closed and sent them home for the evening…

* * *

After exchanging phone numbers, another long meeting for at the coffee shop occurred almost immediately, followed eventually by a fun lunch meeting for pizza… and soon enough, a romantic dinner date in Eren’s dorm… which brought about their first kiss (with each other or ever), then regular study dates where they’d quiz each other (for sweets or body kisses), very intimate “sleepovers”, a thousand _‘I love you’_ s, promise rings, and everything else but directly asking one another  _“Will you marry me?…”_

The next fall, Eren took Photography 2, much more enthusiastically than Photography 1. Unlike his last minute tree photo he turned in last year, which was the most inspiring image he could muster, _this one_ was __very inspired_ , _through and through _…_ and expressed his _strongest feelings._ It was a photo of a free looking Armin in a ruffled white shirt, with the top buttons undone, smiling at the viewer with dazzling eyes and shiny, wet lips, (courtesy of Eren’s…). Eren desaturated the background of the campus surrounding Armin to mere black and white, leaving only Armin and his gorgeous oceanic eyes in color.  
Its title: **_Eren Yeager’s Story._**


End file.
